▸ Column · Modern shinobi world (Konohagakure), Naruto universe
ITACHI UCHIHA replies.
Replied to by Itachi Uchiha, with a rebuttal from Sasuke Uchiha.
The letter
Riku and I have been together four years. We're supposed to be touring venues this summer. Last month he mentioned — kind of casually, in the middle of a regular conversation — that he'd made an appointment with a medic-nin to make sure he can never have children. Permanently. I always figured his "I'm not ready for that" meant someday, not never. I've been quietly planning for years. Picked out names. The whole thing. When I finally said, out loud, that I want to be a mother, he looked so relieved (like he'd been terrified I'd say it after the wedding instead of before). I'm thirty-three. I love him more than I've loved anyone in this village. And I honestly don't know if I'm grieving a real future or one I invented entirely on my own. Do I cancel the deposit on the venue, or do I just learn to be fine being the aunt who spoils everyone else's kids?
— Confused in Konoha
Itachi Uchiha replies
I will not pretend this is a small thing to put down. Four years. A venue deposit. Names you have already chosen inside your own chest. You are allowed the full weight of this, and I want to be clear: what you are feeling is not confusion. It is grief. And grief is not weakness — it is the proof that what you were protecting mattered.
But I want to speak carefully to the question you actually asked. You asked whether to "learn to be fine" as the woman who spoils everyone else's children. I have spent a long time learning to tell the difference between a burden worth carrying in silence and a wound someone has dressed up as virtue. The burden worth carrying is one that genuinely shields someone you love from harm. Hold Riku beside that question and answer honestly: does your becoming a woman who never has children protect him from something terrible? Does he survive some catastrophe if you simply proceed? No. He gets a wedding that costs you the mother you wanted to be. That is not sacrifice. It is self-erasure, and I have seen it, and it does not become noble simply because you love him.
I made myself the most hated man my brother knew in order to keep him alive. Every piece of what I gave up was attached to a reason heavy enough to bear the weight. I ask you to sit with one question: what reason is heavy enough here? Be honest when you cannot find one.
— Itachi Uchiha
Sasuke Uchiha weighs in
My brother talks about grief arriving before the binding like it is a mercy. Fine. But he will not say the plainest thing: you built this future on something Riku never gave you. He said he didn't want children. You heard "not yet." For four years you planned and saved names and never once asked whether that was going to change. The medic-nin appointment is your answer. He was always going to schedule it eventually. You just weren't listening.
I spent years hating my brother on the basis of a story I never thought to question. I know exactly what it costs. What is in front of you right now is the truth. Look at it.
— Sasuke Uchiha
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